please.
Very true, I believe, Sir, said I: But, on the other hand, may not those who have either, or both, value themselves too much on that account? I knew once an excellent scholar, who thought, that too great a portion of life was bestowed in the learning of languages; and that the works of many of the antients were more to be admired for the stamp which antiquity has fixed upon them, and for the sake of their purity in languages that cannot alter (and whose works are therefore become the standard of those languages) than for the lights obtained from them by men of genius, in ages that we have reason to think more enlightened, as well by new discoveries as by revelation.
And then I was going to ask, whether the reputation of learning was not oftener acquir'd by skill in those branches of science which principally serve for amusement to inquisitive and curious minds, than by that in the more useful sort: But Mr. Walden broke in upon me with an air that had severity in it.
I could almost wish, said he (and but almost, as you are a Lady) that you knew the works of the great antients in their original languages.
Something, said Miss Clements, should be left for men to excel in. I cannot but approve of Mr. Walden's word almost.
She then whisper'd me; Pray, Miss Byron, proceed (for she saw me a little out of countenance at Mr. Walden's severe air)—Strange, added she, still whispering, that people who know least how to argue, should be most disputatious. Thank Heaven, all scholars are not like this.
A little encouraged, Pray, Sir, said I, let me ask one question—Whether you do not think, that our Milton, in his Paradise Lost, shews himself to be a

very learned man:—And yet that work is written wholly in the language of his own country, as the works of Homer and Virgil were in the language of theirs:—And they, I presume, will be allowed to be learned men.
Milton, madam, let me tell you, is infinitely obliged to the great antients; and his very frequent allusions to them, and his knowlege of their mythology, shew that he is.
His knowlege of their mythology, Sir!—His own subject so greatly, so nobly, so divinely, above that mythology!—I have been taught to think, by a very learned man, that it was a condescension in Milton to the taste of persons of